


Wings

by Rowan203



Series: Wings Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rowan203/pseuds/Rowan203
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU after season 6. Sam comes back from the cage broken and changed. Dean and Castiel deal with it in different ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wings

Sam doesn't utter a word of English for months after they get him back. For days he doesn't speak at all. He _screams_.

Sometimes he is entirely silent and still, his eyes empty and glazed, like he's gone, like somehow when shoving his soul back into his body they accidentally erased everything about him that was there to begin with. But mostly... mostly he screams.

And Dean could understand it. He really could. A hundred and eighty years in the cage trapped with the devil himself, and who knew what had happened to his brother? Anyone would scream after that kind of horror. Only...it is not the scream of a scared and broken boy. They are angry screams. They are hateful. Dean can feel it.

Dean tries to understand and he tries to comfort. He holds Sam in his arms for hours, gently rocking him as his brother screams and struggles in his arms and tries to bite at Dean like an animal. He whispers in Sam's ears and tries to make him hear over his own noise. _I love you I love you it's okay I will never leave you._

But Sam doesn't seem to care, if he hears at all.

Every day is the same. Eventually Sam will scream and cry himself into exhaustion and fall asleep, and Dean will finally breathe, and think this is okay, he can do this, at least he has his brother back at all. But then he will lay in bed and wait for the screams to start again and think to himself, _what have I done? What have I fucking done?_

Dean prays to Cas, he prays all day every day, because he can't do this alone, he can't, but the angel never comes, and after four days of this hell Dean stops trying. Fuck him. Fuck him for leaving Dean alone with this mess. It's just like Cas to do this, to disappear like that, to never show up.

Until on the sixth day after they get Sam back, he does.  
****  
Dean is fighting with a struggling, screaming, urine-soaked Sam, trying to get him into the bath - because Sam doesn't have the good sense to take himself to the bathroom anymore, Dean guesses there are more important things to think about after decades of torture in hell, or at least that what he tells himself - but sometimes he feels like Sam is doing it just to spite him, no matter how many times Dean will guide him to the bathroom in an hour Sam chooses to piss all over the floor and himself instead, glaring at Dean with angry eyes, _hah, fuck you, have fun cleaning up that mess while I bite and spit_ and then suddenly Cas is there.

Dean glares at him, at his nerve to show up now, after days of ignoring his prayers.

But Cas doesn't seem to notice, instead he kneels in front of Sam, who is still struggling in Dean's arms, his brow furrowing with piercing eyes as he looks at him.

Suddenly Dean wants to cry. "This is what he's like all the time," he says. Then he says the words he's been thinking for days but has been trying to ignore. "He's... he's gone."

Cas looks thoughtful for a second. " I do not think so." he says. Then he reaches out and gently places a hand on Sam's forehead. Dean's about to warn him - _you probably don't want to do that_ \- but Sam calms.

"Alar, Sam. Nidali obza gemeganza ol." It takes Dean a second to realize what is happening. At first he is distracted by the fact that for the first time in days, Sam is quiet and still, but not empty. He is looking to Castiel like he has never seen him before. He is looking at him like maybe he is the most important, no the _only_ person in the universe.

Cas is speaking Enochian Dean realizes. Then it clicks. Fucking Enochian! Sam had spent near two hundred years in hell and who was Dean to assume his babbling English meant a thing to him? Hundreds of years in the company of the most powerful angels in the universe, and no matter what they had done to him, how they had hurt him, how vain must Dean be to think his lowly human form had anything to offer Sam? They had brought him back...And taken him from everything he had ever known for over a hundred years. Dean thinks he might be sick.

By this point Sam had heaved himself on to Cas's lap, clinging to his shirt like he might disappear. Dean feels like he should apologize for this on behalf of his brother, but Cas does not seem to care. Sam places his head to Cas's chest and Castiel strokes back his hair. "He can feel my grace," he says. As if that explains everything.

Dean is definitely going to cry or puke. He isn't sure which.

Cas regards him quietly. "You look exhausted. Why don't you go to bed? I will watch Sam for a while."

Dean doesn't argue.

****  
He is woken in the night to Sam crying and screaming and Dean is up and out of bed before he has time to think, confused as to why he isn't by Sam's bed where he normally is. By the time he reaches Sam's side of the room he remembers.

Cas has Sam in his arms again. "He is dreaming," he mutters in that eerie calmness of his. "Of the cage. They hurt him. But he misses it." Dean doesn't say anything more and nor does Cas. Cas just lays next to Sam while he cries and Dean hears the quiet flutter of wings he can not see as Castiel envelopes them around his little brother.

****  
Things get better, Dean supposes. Cas leaves during the day - off to do whatever Heavenly duties he needs to fulfill - leaves Dean alone with Sam, but Sam no longer struggles, he does not spit or bite or look at Dean with that piercing glance of hatred, like somehow he has betrayed him. But he hardly seems to care that Dean is there either. Cas returns at night and holds his brother, makes him calm, so he can sleep. Wraps himself around him tightly. He hears them whisper Enochian quietly to each other when Sam awakes crying in the night.

To Dean, Sam says one word only. The one piece of Enochian Dean now knows and understands. Vepahh. Wings.

Four days after Cas starts paying a visit, Dean is attempting to feed Sam lunch. But he's not interested. Locked in his own head as usual and saying over and over. "Vepahh. Vepahh."

"I know." Dean says. "I get it. Vepahh. You always want Cas, huh? What's wrong with me, Sammy? Why won't you talk to me?" He stands from the table and sighs. "Where are you Sammy, huh? Where's my brother? Where have you gone?"

Sam stares. "Vepahh." Dean hurls the plate he is holding across the room.

****  
When Castiel arrives that night, Dean is sat on Sam bed's with him while Sam lies impatiently, fidgeting like he knows someone is due to arrive, while Dean reads aloud some Charles Dicken's nonsense, the sort of crap Sammy used to love, even if he's not listening, just so Dean can pretend he is, can pretend his brother cares.

The arrival of the angel suddenly appearing in the room is Dean's cue. He goes to stand up from the bed. But then something happens that he isn't expecting. Sam lets out a panicked gasp, and grabs on to Dean's wrist. Dean starts and looks at his brother confused. "Sammy?" he says.

He pulls Dean onto the bed until he is lying next to him again. "Olaini oli, mezzi uni" Sam says, eyes wide and pleading, like he's begging Dean to understand." Olain remuza oli."  
Dean looks to Castiel, startled at the fact that Sammy is speaking to him. "What's he saying?"

"He...he's saying that he is here. He's asking you to be patient. That he has always been here."

****  
Dean lies across the room as usual that night and hears his brother whisper what sounds like nonsense to his ears to Castiel quietly. But as he falls asleep to the sounds of fluttering angel wings and his brother breathing in the next bed, he begins to think that maybe things just might be okay after all.


End file.
